Occupy Sotheby's - Auction for the rich disrupted in support of Teamsters strike

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

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I've been to this picket line a few times. It's been on since the Summer. Usually there are only 1 or 2 teamsters outside, walking in circles behind a police fence. Occasionally they have the inflatable rat (http://labornotes.org/blogs/2010/09/rat-company-routed-new-york-movers-0) set up. To be honest, it was really pitiful and disheartening in its isolation and uselessness. A sign of how detached the union bureaucrats are today. Great to see this break out of isolation, with 100 people from Occupy Wall Street joining the picket. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be expanded.

Delegations should be elected to go to work places, unemployment centers, etc., to begin talks on coordinated actions. This is the next step, electing committees in the places we are to be able to organize our work around common plans, instead of walling ourselves off in a park in the capital of finance.

[RED DAVE]

I've been to this picket line a few times. It's been on since the Summer. Usually there are only 1 or 2 teamsters outside, walking in circles behind a police fence. Occasionally they have the inflatable rat (http://labornotes.org/blogs/2010/09/rat-company-routed-new-york-movers-0) set up.Yeah, it was sad.


To be honest, it was really pitiful and disheartening in its isolation and uselessness. A sign of how detached the union bureaucrats are today. Great to see this break out of isolation, with 100 people from Occupy Wall Street joining the picket. This is the sort of thing that really needs to be expanded.All correct, except for the role of a couple of low-level union bureaucrats and an OWS retired union worker who set this up.


Delegations should be elected to go to work places, unemployment centers, etc., to begin talks on coordinated actions.What is already happening is that union activists, shop stewards and, yes, dreaded union bureaucrats are already coming to OWS, specifically to the Labor Outreach Group. This should be complemented with actual organizing. One thing that has happened already is that one union in touch with OWS, the Sotheby's Teamsters, are working with workers at WNBC, who are working without a contract.


This is the next step, electing committees in the places we are to be able to organize our work around common plans, instead of walling ourselves off in a park in the capital of finance.True. the Labor Outreach Group meets tonight at 6:00. PM me for the location. Be there or be square.

RED DAVE

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Let's not pretend the Teamster leadership is anything but an utterly entrenched bureaucracy; completely comfortable in its positions floating between the bosses and the workers it supposedly represents; tied by a thousand threads to the capitalists, their party and their state apparatus.

The teamsters at Sotheby's have been all but abandoned to their fate. The bureaucracy could have unleashed the power of the national union, which is still sizable and concentrated in key industries. But of course it didn't do that. And it won't do that. It's too busy counting out the millions it'll fork over to the Democrats next election cycle.

Maybe the Homeland Security Airport Cops union you were so enthused about a few months ago will come out and help them. :rolleyes:

The role of militants is to help demystify things. People are fed nothing but lies from the day they are born by the media, schools, etc. The only real advantage we have is the foresight and understanding that comes from examining the world critically for some time. If we forsake our obligation to help clarify things as much as we can when workers start to awaken than we are no better than the local liberal petition pushers.